Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, The - Stieg Larsson [147]
Salander put a solid heap of paper on the kitchen table, around 500 pages. She quickly sorted the material into different stacks.
“Let’s take them in chronological order.” She handed Blomkvist a list.
1949—REBECKA JACOBSSON, Hedestad (30112)
1954—MARI HOLMBERG, Kalmar (32018)
1957—RAKEL LUNDE, Landskrona (32027)
1960—(MAGDA) LOVISA SJÖBERG, Karlstad (32016)
1960—LIV GUSTAVSSON, Stockholm (32016)
1962—LEA PERSSON, Uddevalla (31208)
1964—SARA WITT, Ronneby (32109)
1966—LENA ANDERSSON, Uppsala (30112)
“The first case in this series is Rebecka Jacobsson, 1949, the details of which you already know. The next case I found was Mari Holmberg, a thirty-two-year-old prostitute in Kalmar who was murdered in her apartment in October 1954. It’s not clear exactly when she was killed, since her body wasn’t found right away, probably nine or ten days later.”
“And how do you connect her to Harriet’s list?”
“She was tied up and badly abused, but the cause of death was strangulation. She had a sanitary towel down her throat.”
Blomkvist sat in silence for a moment before he looked up the verse that was Leviticus 20:18.
“If a man lies with a woman having her sickness, and uncovers her nakedness, he has made naked her fountain, and she has uncovered the fountain of her blood; both of them shall be cut off from among their people.”
Salander nodded.
“Harriet Vanger made the same connection. OK. Next?”
“May 1957, Rakel Lunde, forty-five. She worked as a cleaning woman and was a bit of a happy eccentric in the village. She was a fortune-teller and her hobby was doing Tarot readings, palms, et cetera. She lived outside Landskrona in a house a long way from anywhere, and she was murdered there some time early in the morning. She was found naked and tied to a laundry-drying frame in her back garden, with her mouth taped shut. Cause of death was a heavy rock being repeatedly thrown at her. She had countless contusions and fractures.”
“Jesus Christ. Lisbeth, this is fucking disgusting.”
“It gets worse. The initials R.L. are correct—you found the Bible quote?”
“Overly explicit. A man or a woman who is a medium or a wizard shall be put to death; they shall be stoned with stones, their blood shall be upon them.”
“Then there’s Sjöberg in Ranmo outside Karlstad. She’s the one Harriet listed as Magda. Her full name was Magda Lovisa, but people called her Lovisa.”
Blomkvist listened while Salander recounted the bizarre details of the Karlstad murder. When she lit a cigarette he pointed at the pack, and she pushed it over to him.
“So the killer attacked the animal too?”
“The Leviticus verse says that if a woman has sex with an animal, both must be killed.”
“The likelihood of this woman having sex with a cow must be…well, non-existent.”
“The verse can be read literally. It’s enough that she ‘approaches’ the animal, which a farmer’s wife would undeniably do every day.”
“Understood.”
“The next case on Harriet’s list is Sara. I’ve identified her as Sara Witt, thirty-seven, living in Ronneby. She was murdered in January 1964, found tied to her bed, subjected to aggravated sexual assault, but the cause of death was asphyxiation; she was strangled. The killer also started a fire, with the probable intention of burning the whole house down to the ground, but part of the fire went out by itself, and the rest was taken care of by the fire service, who were there in a very short time.”
“And the connection?”
“Listen to this. Sara Witt was both the daughter of a pastor and married to a pastor. Her husband was away that weekend.”
“And the daughter of any priest, if she profanes herself by playing the harlot, profanes her father; she shall be burned with fire. OK. That fits on the list. You said you’d found more cases.”
“I’ve found three other women who were murdered under such similarly strange circumstances and they could have been on Harriet’s list. The first